


Desires of the Heart

by Kate_Shepard



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Mirror of Erised, Multiple Pairings, No Smut, Shakarian - Freeform, Shenko - Freeform, Shrios, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 02:03:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7462338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate_Shepard/pseuds/Kate_Shepard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard finds the Mirror of Erised. How do her desires change based on her relationships? Does finding it actually change anything in her world?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Garrus

**Author's Note:**

> I saw this in a prompt and liked the idea. The mirror itself is the only crossover point. Series of one-shots. If there's a pairing you'd like to see, leave a comment and I'll give it a try.

Shepard gave a tug and the dusty sheet fell to the floor. Garrus looked doubtfully at the strange object Shepard had found in an antique store on the Citadel. He thought it was a mirror but the glass was clouded with age and showed no reflection. It was also one of the ugliest things he’d ever seen and in Shepard’s new apartment, that was saying a _lot_. Humans said turians had weird tastes in art. Garrus thought that was a bit hypocritical. 

“Why did you get this thing again?” he asked.

“I like it,” she said, crossing her arms and rocking back on her heel to look at it. “It needs some work but not much. Once I polish it up and clean the glass, it’ll be pretty.”

“If you say so,” he said.

“What?” she asked. “You don’t like it?”

“Shepard. Sweetheart. Love of my life. There are many, many things about you that I admire. Your taste in art is not one of them,” he said, slinging an arm over her shoulders. “But, if it makes you happy, I guess I can just pretend it isn’t there.”

“You can sleep somewhere else,” she pointed out.

“You’d miss me too much,” he said and she sighed. Mark up a point to him. “What does the writing on the top say?”

“‘Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi,’” she read. It sounded like poetic gibberish to him.

“And that means?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know that language and my translator isn’t picking it up. I’ll ask EDI the next time she comes over.”

He went downstairs to drink a beer and watch the game while she got to work on the mirror. He could just see her on the balcony and his attention drifted away from the vid screen until he gave up on keeping track of the score and shifted so that he could watch her. He still didn’t know if it was just a general feature of her humanity or a characteristic of her individually that she was able to move with such grace whether she was dispatching a wave of husks with her bare hands or lining up a shot with her Black Widow or doing something as mundane as cleaning glass but she was entrancing. 

If only she could bring that grace to the dance floor, he thought with a quiet laugh and then with rising desire as he remembered that she had once. That dance, oh, that dance. He’d practiced with Vega for months to learn the steps and had conspired with the Marine to get the music timed just right on their date. Even then, he hadn’t been sure she would go along with it. Shepard wasn’t much of a follower. She had, though. Once she’d gotten past her initial nerves at their audience and had focused on him and the way they moved together, they had made magic. It was one of the memories he’d carry with him to his grave. 

His plates were beginning to shift when he realized that she was just standing in front of the mirror. That wasn’t odd in itself as she’d finally gotten it clean and it stood to reason that she’d want to look at it. It was her posture that was strange. She looked like she’d been caught in some kind of stasis field. When he called her name, she didn’t answer. Frowning, he put his beer on the table and went up the stairs. She still didn’t acknowledge him. 

He went behind her and slid his arms around her waist, curious to see what had drawn her attention but still halfway turned on and hoping he could distract her long enough for a trip to the bedroom. Or, maybe, convince her to put that ugly mirror to good use. She slipped her fingers between his but it was an automatic reaction borne of habit rather than affection. 

“Shepard?” he asked again. She didn’t answer. “What’s so…” he trailed off as he looked into the mirror, expecting to see them reflected. He did see them but not as they stood now. A series of images flashed across the glass. Shepard and himself in the midst of what was clearly a battlefield, cheering and hugging each other and their team as the Reapers fell around them. Shepard smiling up at him in a dress with one of those sheer veil things her people wore and himself in a tux as they floated around a dance floor. Shepard and himself nude on a beach—far back from the water, of course—with drinks in hand and a tropical forest in the background. Shepard beneath him, calling his name. Shepard cradling a tiny turian baby in her arms while he stood beside her with his arms around them. Shepard and himself aboard the _Normandy_ with nothing more pressing than pirates and red sand dealers to fight. Shepard, her hair gray and her face aged, and himself with his plates weathered and his colony markings faded, lying forehead to forehead with their hands on each other’s cheeks as they went out the way they’d lived: together.

“Are you seeing this?” she asked in a whisper.

“I think so,” he said. “What do you see?”

“I see you,” she said, a smile gracing her face. “You have a little human girl and you’re spinning her around in the air while she laughs and squeals. And me sitting on the floor watching you with a little turian boy asleep in my lap. Is that what you see?”

“No,” he said and described the series of images. 

“How is this happening?” she asked. “Is there a holo projector in it? Is this some sort of ancient form of entertainment?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t think I mind it, though.”

She tore her eyes away from the image and snapped a picture of it on her omni-tool for EDI. A moment later, it dinged and she laughed. “She says it’s written backwards. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“What does it say?” he asked, reminding himself that he needed to learn to read human script. 

“‘I show not your face but your heart’s desire.’ Huh. Your heart’s desire is to grow old with me?” she asked, turning in his arms and wrapping her arms around his neck.

“Is that a problem?” he asked warily. He knew she cared about him. Hell, she’d told him she loved him. That didn’t mean that she’d meant it forever. Humans didn’t automatically mate for life like turians did. She’d said many times that she couldn’t look beyond the war. Her description of her vision gave him hope, though.

“No,” she said. “I want that, too. Shepard and Vakarian forever.”

“Always,” he said.


	2. Thane

“Siha?” Thane asked, walking into her cabin. When she didn’t look at him, he went to her and knelt down beside her. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor and he would have thought her meditating had she not been staring at the strange mirror she’d found. Shepard was not a vain woman. She gave her reflection a passing glance as she scooped her hair into what she called a ponytail after showering or before she went to meet with someone important to ensure that she was presentable but she did not linger on it. It might not be so strange had she been avoiding her reflection up to this point in fear of seeing changes from the woman she’d been before her death. If that had been the case, he would have assumed that she was finally fully examining herself. 

She was not. She was almost looking _through_ the mirror rather than _at_ it and there was a sheen of moisture in her eyes. If she blinked, a tear would fall. The expression on her face, though, was not grief. It was joy. “Siha?” he repeated. “What are you seeing?”

“A dream,” she said quietly. She still did not look at him.

“EDI said that you have not moved from this spot in almost twelve hours, Siha,” he said. 

“Has it been that long?” she asked absently. Her lack of concern bordered on frightening. Shepard was not derelict in her duties. The AI had sounded almost worried about her when she’d summoned him.

He moved in front of her and blocked her vision of…whatever she was looking at. She made a sound of distress and attempted to move around him. He gripped her shoulders tightly and forced her to look at him. The faraway look in her eyes was alarming but it began to clear at the sight of him. She blinked and her brow furrowed as she moved her legs. He could only assume they were stiff and sore from sitting in the same position for so long. 

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“EDI requested that I check on you,” he said. “She was…concerned. What did you see, Shepard?”

She shook her head and pressed a hand to her forehead. “I don’t know. It was like a dream. Can drell venom cause flashbacks? There are hallucinogenic drugs that can cause flashbacks even when you’re not actively taking them. Or maybe I’ve finally snapped and I’m going crazy.”

“No,” he said. “It is not that strong and you are sane. What did you see?”

“Us,” she said. “I saw us.”

“And what were we doing, Siha, that brought tears to your eyes?” he asked softly, brushing away the moisture that had finally fallen. Tears were not a shameful thing to his people as some of hers seemed to believe. It took strength to be open with another and display emotion, not weakness as she thought.

“ _Living_ ,” she said intensely. “No Collectors, no Reapers, no illness. A desert at sunset where you and I sat together beside a stream. Your arm was around my shoulders and my head was on yours and we watched while Kolyat carried a child that looked like you to play in the water. I was…old. My hair was gray. We were…so… _happy_ , Thane.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper and she turned her face away, weeping openly now.

His arms went around her, pulling her to his chest as he crooned into her hair. He felt as if she had just taken his heart from his chest and shattered it into an infinite number of pieces. Words were one of many weapons in his arsenal but they failed him now as he attempted to find even one to accurately describe the pain hers had engendered in him. He wanted…he wanted…movement in the mirror caught his eye and he turned away from it, ready to defend her from whatever threat had attempted to flank her in her vulnerability. The room was empty save for them. It lacked even the tell-tale shimmer of Kasumi’s cloak which his modified vision picked up clearly. He looked back in the direction of the mirror, finally truly seeing it for the first time, and stared.

He saw the two of them but not the vision she had described. Within the mirror, he saw himself in his usual place behind and to the right of her. These were not Collectors they now fought, but the Reapers themselves. He watched as he fought alongside her. Throughout his life, he had fought alone and his own survival had been tantamount. Since joining Shepard, though, that had changed. He fought as a team. Since loving Shepard, it had changed further. _Her_ survival was what was vital. He did not merely fight to kill her enemies; he fought to protect her from them though she herself was a warrior-angel and did not truly need his protection. 

The vision shifted, showing Shepard standing against the railing in a command center on the ship. She had her head bent and looked utterly without hope until he came to her and whispered something in her ear that made her eyes light and her face fill with determination and direction. Her hand went to his face below his frill and his stroked her cheek as they looked into each other’s eyes, drawing strength from each other.

He pulled himself from the vision that would never be. The mirror was showing both of them appealing lies; for what purpose, he did not know. His health was fading. They were both fully aware of this and that their time together was slipping away at an ever-quickening pace like the final grains of sand in an hourglass. He would not be by her side through the war. It would be others, likely Vakarian, who protected and gave her hope. 

The inscription across the top of the intricate mirror caught his eye. _Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi._ “Siha,” he said, “do you know what the mirror says?”

“No,” she answered. “The letters are human in shape but I don’t recognize the language.”

Perhaps it was because his own language was written right to left and that was the direction in which his eye automatically attempted to go when he was faced with writing he did not understand that he almost immediately understood the message where it seemed that she had not. “‘I show not your face but your heart’s desire,’” he quoted as understanding dawned. 

He had thought himself content to simply watch, to take the time left given and praise all he knew for allowing him to walk his final days with hope and certainty that he was worthy of more than his cold isolation, solely because she believed. He had been wrong. The deepest desire of his own heart was to be able to remain by her side, to protect her with everything that he was, to give her hope when all seemed lost. 

That realization did not surprise him overly much. What did stun him, though, was hers. That the woman tasked with saving the galaxy, a siha of the highest caliber, desired nothing more than to grow old with him was a gift of which he was _not_ worthy. Shepard asked for nothing for herself and gave her all to everyone with a need which she had the power to fulfill. He had every faith that she would win this war in the end and, when she did, anything in the galaxy that she desired would be hers. Riches, fame, glory, nothing would be withheld from the woman who had saved them all should she want it. And yet, the thing that she truly wanted was the one thing that none could give her.

His mind flashed back to a conversation with Dr. Chakwas a few weeks prior. She had presented him with an opportunity that he had refused. The likelihood of his survival was slim in any case and he could not justify taking the chance at life from another solely for his own selfish desire. He had killed enough innocents. However, the memory of the look on her face as she’d watched her own vision made his resolve waver. It was a chance, however slim, and if the chance of that dream coming true could give her the strength she needed in the bitter days to come, then was it not a worthy cause? If this dream gave her hope, then how could he allow it to slip through her fingers without even attempting to make it a reality? Hope could be the difference between living and dying and, above all, he wanted her to live a long and happy life not weighed down by the grief of his passing. 

“Come with me, Siha,” he said, rising. 

She wiped her face and looked at him curiously but followed him to the lift. He pressed the control for the crew deck but, rather than go straight to his quarters as she’d expected, he turned left and left again to the med bay. The doctor was seated at her desk and looked up when they entered. “Thane, Commander, is something wrong?” she asked.

He squeezed Shepard’s hand and took as deep of a breath as he could and said, “Doctor, that option which we had previously discussed….”

“Yes?” Chakwas said.

“I would like you to add my name to the transplant list,” he said simply.

Shepard looked at him sharply and he watched as emotions flew rapidly across her face. She couldn’t seem to decide on one until her countenance faltered. Her lower lip trembled and new moisture filled her eyes before a radiant smile broke across her face like the dawn and she threw herself at him, threatening to knock him back with the force of her embrace. He caught her firmly and she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his throat. “I love you, Thane,” she whispered.

“And I, you, Siha,” he said. “Always.”


	3. Kaidan

“What is it?” Kaidan asked. 

“It’s a mirror,” Shepard answered.

“I know that. What does it say?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Liara, do you recognize it?” Shepard asked.

“No,” she said. “It is human script. I had thought one of you would know.”

The trio cocked their heads at the strangely out of place antique, the lingering animosity between Shepard and Kaidan momentarily forgotten. “What’s an old human mirror doing in the Mars Archives?” he asked.

“People do live here, Kaidan,” Liara pointed out. “Perhaps it is a family heirloom. I do not know why it would be here, though, rather than in their living quarters. Why would they place this with the Prothean relics we were studying?”

“Are you sure it’s a mirror?” Shepard asked. “It’s so dusty I can’t be certain.” She wiped away the dust to find that it was, indeed, a mirror. She was about to dismiss it and give the order to press on when movement in it caught her eye and she turned to look behind her. “Someone’s in here,” she said when neither Kaidan nor Liara moved.

“What?” Liara asked as Kaidan said, “The door hasn’t opened, Commander, and we already cleared the room.”

“Clear it again,” she ordered and they did. Liara looked at her curiously as Kaidan gave her a look that clearly said she was off her rocker. She tried to ignore just how much that hurt. 

“By the goddess,” Liara whispered suddenly, walking up to the mirror with her hand extended. “Am I the only one seeing this?”

“Whoa,” Kaidan said, moving toward it. “What is this?”

“What?” Shepard asked, shouldering between them. Her mouth fell open as she realized that she wasn’t seeing their reflection but something else entirely. 

She and Kaidan were there but in civilian clothes. They stood on the balcony of a house somewhere on what was clearly Earth. The sky was clear and devoid of Reapers and the city sprawling in the distance was whole. They weren’t looking at the magnificent view, though. They were facing each other. Kaidan had a hand buried in her hair and another around her waist as he kissed her softly. The look on his face as he pulled back was open and hopeful and then he was kneeling in front of her with a box in his hand. 

Shepard turned away abruptly and shook her head. The pressure was getting to her. That was all. In the last thirty hours, she’d been brought before the Defense Committee, hit by a table and knocked out, witnessed the Reapers’ arrival on Earth, fought through husks and creatures that looked like mutated batarians, gotten reinstated into the Alliance, escaped Earth, been sent to Mars, and had been dealing with Kaidan—now _Major_ Alenko and wasn’t that swell considering that she’d outranked him by two when they’d met—and his constant suspicions and insults. It was just stress. Anybody could be forgiven for being a little bit off her game under the circumstances.

“Am I the only one who sees this?” Liara asked.

“What do _you_ see?” Kaidan asked.

“Myself talking to a real, live Prothean,” she said in a tone of wonder. “And my mother is there.”

“That isn’t what I see but it’s definitely not the here and now,” Kaidan said. 

“Shepard,” Liara said, “get a picture of the inscription. I will run it through my database and see if I can decipher it.”

Shepard did, careful to look at the mirror only through the display on her omni-tool. The image there was just the three of them. If she looked directly at it, though, she could still see herself and Kaidan and that hurt far too much. It was a trivial pain compared to the knowledge that her world was burning right now but one that she could put her hands on and comprehend. The pain of the Reapers’ arrival was too big.

“All right,” she said, “let’s move.”

Liara said, “Wait. Shepard, what did you see?”

“A lie,” she said tersely, bringing her rifle over her shoulder. “Let’s go.”

___

“Shepard, wait,” Kaidan said.

She turned back to see him sitting up in the hospital bed. His handsome face was mottled in bruises but, for the moment, the accusations were absent from his eyes. “What?” she asked, pausing before the doorway.

"Do you remember the mirror?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered. It had haunted her thoughts for weeks now.

"Did you ever find out what the writing meant?" he asked.

"I show not your face but your heart's desire," she answered. "It was just written backwards."

“What did you see?” he asked.

She considered her answer before saying, “After the war.”

“What was it like?” he asked.

“Happy,” she answered sadly. “What did you see?”

“The woman I love,” he answered.

She turned and left before he could see her face fall. 

___

Kaidan pinned Shepard between himself and the wall of her new apartment. The party raged on around them but it was quiet in this alcove. His hand was braced on the wall and his head bent down until she could smell the rainy scent of eezo and the sweetness of the drink Sam had made him. His warm breath grazed her ear as he said, “Come on, Shepard. You have to tell me. What did you really see in that mirror?”

“You,” she whispered. “Who did you see?” She bit her lip and wondered why she’d asked. She didn’t want to know who he’d loved back then. He was with her now and that had to be enough.

“You,” he answered. “I thought you knew that already. I love you, Shepard. I always have. I always will.”


End file.
